At about 1PM Eastern today, the Seattle Seahawks will hold a press conference announcing Pete Carroll as their new head coach. He leaves behind a USC program that went 97-19 under Carroll in 9 years, including a 7-2 bowl game record and 2 national titles.
The words of the immortal Ron Burgundy come to mind, "I immediately regret this decision." Yes, Seattle is about to throw caution to the wind, and in an effort to save a team that's flailing for its life, jump into a pit full of bears.
Apparently the decision to can Mora was made by Paul Allen, who decided that he wanted "the biggest name out there", and gave his CEO a list of names he would be okay with as the new head coach. That list supposedly had one name on it. Now, Paul Allen did something similar once before, back in 1999 he fired Dennis Erickson (showing incredible football acumen) and threw the kitchen sink at Mike Holmgren, offering him both the GM and head coaching positions. While this would end up being a great success (especially in Seahawks terms) it was only after Allen forced Holmgren to relinquish his GM duties that this team went anywhere. And Mike Holmgren was on top of the NFL world at the time, coming off a 3 year stretch with 1 Super Bowl win and another appearance.
Now Allen is going back to the well, only this time he's hiring one of the guys on top of the college coaching world. When will people finally get it? Coaching college football and coaching professional football are 2 entirely different animals. Pete Carroll has had 2 short stints in the NFL already: 1 year with the Jets (6-10 record), and he took over a Patriots team fresh off of a Super Bowl appearance (10-6/1 playoff win, 9-7/0 playoff wins, 8-8, no playoff apprearance) before the Patriots realized he had lost the team and fired him. Carroll then landed at USC (as its 4th choice) and built himself an empire (see the top of this article for the stats).
Carroll is such a success at the college level in part because he failed at the pro level. On the spectrum of hard nosed coach to players coach, the extreme end on the players coach side might as well be renamed the Carroll wing. Carroll doesn't seem to have it in him to be a disciplinarian. At the college level, a 58-year-old with ADD (Carroll's never been diagnosed, but has many times diagnosed himself) who throws himself into drills with the players,] plays pranks on them (youtube USC lean on me), and creates an atmosphere where they feel comfortable posing for pictures with the Governator on the sideline during a game can be emperor. 19-year-olds with NFL dreams will eat that stuff up. All Carroll has to do to keep them in line is remind them that their dream of playing football in the NFL and making it big goes through him.
In the NFl, however, most of the players already have financial security. Motivating millionaire adults is totally different from motivating college kids. Carroll has taken a couple of swipes at motivating millionaires, and it didn't work. By the end of his term with the Patriots, story after story was leaking out that he had lost the locker room, that players did not respect his authority. Sounds like a great guy to be coaching your team, Mr. Allen!
Could Pete Carroll have learned something from his failures? Sure, it's possible. But his success at USC had a lot to do with his personality, a personality he had back in his previous NFL stints. He didn't have to change himself to create the dynasty at USC, he just had to change his arena. This brings up a great question, "Why would Carroll leave his empire in Los Angeles for a faltering team in the NFL's Siberia?" If you listen to Pete Carroll, he relished the challenge. If you look just a little deeper, you see the vultures circling USC's football program. Rules appear to have been bent at the very least during Carroll's tenure at USC, and many people believe sanctions are coming for the football team (and that USC is trying to sacrifice its basketball team to avoid these sanctions).
So, before I write the next great American novel, let's review the facts:
Seattle is about to hire a guy who succeeded at the college level because...
- He accumulated more talent that most everyone else on his 85+ man roster. The NFL has 53 man rosters and a salary cap. This method doesn't work in the NFL.
- His personality. A personality that has been shown to not work in the NFL (see Jim Mora, Dennis Erickson, Barry Switzer. I can see you getting ready to argue. Don't. Don't use the Super Bowl XXX win to argue on Switzer's behalf. We could have gone to the Ukraine, picked a random person off the street, and that person could have coached the Cowboys to that Super Bowl title.)
- Good defensive schemes. This might be a plus for Seattle, as he cut his teeth as an NFL defensive coordinator. But he was last involved in the league 10 years ago. Who knows how well those schemes have aged, with regards to the NFL.
In sum, this is a terrible move for the Seattle Seahawks. Paul Allen's heart may be in the right place, but he is going to end up firebombing the team in an effort to save it. Perhaps if they hadn't botched the hiring process (allowing Mora to address the media as if he was staying another season, talking with Carroll behind Mora's back while he still had the job, all the leaks ahead of any interviews they did, making a complete mockery of the league's Rooney Rule, having candidate after candidate pull out of interviews for the Seahawks GM job, the list goes on) I hope I am 100% wrong, but I just can't see it. The team I love is heading back to the Dark Ages, and thanks to his giant contract and the faith of the man in charge, I don't see an Age of Enlightment coming anytime soon.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Strike a blow for fairness in college football
If you care at all about fairness, or college football, or fairness in college football, if you despise good-ol-boy networks and societies designed to keep the same group of people in charge year after year after year, do something about it.
Turn your TV to FOX. Right now. Seriously, drop what you are doing and put on FOX right now. Leave the TV on FOX for the next 3.5 hours. If you happen to enjoy good college football, then watch the Boise State-TCU game and enjoy the bonus.
TCU and Boise State are both outside of the 6 BCS conferences, which means they have to jump through a bunch of extra hoops just to play in these featured bowl games, and it's just about impossible for them to get serious consideration for berths in the national title game. A big reason for this is the major bowls are worried these teams won't travel well and that casual fans won't tune in to watch games featuring these teams, preferring games with big name schools instead.
Show them they are wrong. Do it for fairness, if you don't want to do it to see some good college football. These are the #3 and #6 teams in the country this season. One of these teams has the #1 defense in the country. The other just put forth the most exciting bowl game of the decade the last time they were in the Fiesta Bowl 3 years ago.
Watch the game, or at least have it on in the background.
Turn your TV to FOX. Right now. Seriously, drop what you are doing and put on FOX right now. Leave the TV on FOX for the next 3.5 hours. If you happen to enjoy good college football, then watch the Boise State-TCU game and enjoy the bonus.
TCU and Boise State are both outside of the 6 BCS conferences, which means they have to jump through a bunch of extra hoops just to play in these featured bowl games, and it's just about impossible for them to get serious consideration for berths in the national title game. A big reason for this is the major bowls are worried these teams won't travel well and that casual fans won't tune in to watch games featuring these teams, preferring games with big name schools instead.
Show them they are wrong. Do it for fairness, if you don't want to do it to see some good college football. These are the #3 and #6 teams in the country this season. One of these teams has the #1 defense in the country. The other just put forth the most exciting bowl game of the decade the last time they were in the Fiesta Bowl 3 years ago.
Watch the game, or at least have it on in the background.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Weird weekend of football
First off, Urban Meyer came out and retired from the sweetest coaching gig in college football due to health problems related from being a coach expected to contend for the national title every year. I don't mean to minimize the strain that job puts on a guy, and its admirable that a guy at the top of his profession would make the choice to put his health and family over his job. Of course, Meyer muddied the waters just a day later when he unretired and instead decided to take a leave of absence after Florida's bowl game. Something doesn't quite add up here, unless Meyer's family is as fond of his arrogant nature as opposing teams are, and told him they don't want him home 24/7.
Then, Jim Caldwell, when faced with a fork in his road, chose the gutless path. Now, the Colts owe nothing to any other team in the league, and they owe nothing to the "integrity of the game". But there is no evidence that taking games off simply because you have locked up your playoff position is at all helpful on the road to a Super Bowl. For evidence, please see the Colts of 2005, 2007, and 2008. Also see the New York Giants of 2007. If you're committed to the gutless route, then why let your starters go midway into the third quarter? Did the stars align so that the 4th quarter was that much more dangerous for Peyton's knees than the first 3 quarters? The fact that Manning had been hit once all day made you that afraid for his health? And why stick Curtis Painter into a situation up only 5 stuck deep in his own territory? Why not give Manning one more shot to try and get a two-score lead? The Jets were doing nothing on offense. Forcing Mark Sanchez to have to try and win the game would likely have resulted in him handing the game to you without Curtis Painter having to take off his training wheels. Instead, you make the poor guy the symbol of the most unpopular decision in Indianapolis since Ron Artest went into the crowd. Instead of taking the chance to fire up your team, you let them down. Good luck getting them up for their first playoff game after 2 weeks and one quarter of not bothering to show up for games.
Sunday was also marked by terrible efforts from teams allegedly fighting for playoff berths.
Exhibit A is the Giants no-show at home against already eliminated Carolina to the tune of 41-9. Maybe it's for the best that their tearing Giants Stadium down. In the last 5 seasons, in which the Giants have not finished below .500 and have been to the playoffs 4 times and won a Super Bowl, the Giants have won just 57% of their home games. That's not much of a home field advantage.
On that note, the case for John Fox should come down to one question, are you satisfied going into 2010 with Jake Delhomme as your starter? If his answer isn't an immediate "NO!" fire him.
Baltimore went into Pittsburgh to face a wounded Pittsburgh team, and committed 11 penalties for 113 yards.
Jacksonville forgot to show up for their game in New England, and the gametime temperature was 50 degrees, so you can't use the they were cold excuse.
Oh, and of course, how can I forget the New Orleans Saints, who went up 17-0 on Tampa Bay in the first half AT HOME and lost, 20-17. Really??? What happened to the team that started the season 13-0? Losing to the Cowboys is one thing, but Tampa Bay? This ruined Tampa Bay's season too, as the win makes it that much harder to fire Raheem Morris at the end of the season and go hard after Cowher.
And then finally, on Monday Texas Tech suspended head coach and pirate enthusiast Mike Leach for mistreating a player who had been diagnosed with a concussion. Leach allegedly banished the player to a dark closet for the duration of practice (about 3 hours) more than once. This player also happens to be the son of ESPN football analyst Craig James. There is no good (or mediocre) reason to stick a player in a closet. Mike Leach is crazy, both in a mad scientist way and a you can't have a long conversation with him and follow it way, but there's no way he could think this was a good idea. The only rationale that makes sense is Leach didn't think he was really hurt and he stuck him in a closet to teach him a lesson. In a year where painstaking efforts have been made to educate people about concussions and their severity, this is a crying shame. Kudos to Texas Tech for acting swiftly, though their decision to suspend him before the investigation is completed may have as much to do with Texas Tech's annoyance at Leach's dalliances with other schools last offseason as it does with their opinion of what truly happened. Either way, it's the right move.
Then, Jim Caldwell, when faced with a fork in his road, chose the gutless path. Now, the Colts owe nothing to any other team in the league, and they owe nothing to the "integrity of the game". But there is no evidence that taking games off simply because you have locked up your playoff position is at all helpful on the road to a Super Bowl. For evidence, please see the Colts of 2005, 2007, and 2008. Also see the New York Giants of 2007. If you're committed to the gutless route, then why let your starters go midway into the third quarter? Did the stars align so that the 4th quarter was that much more dangerous for Peyton's knees than the first 3 quarters? The fact that Manning had been hit once all day made you that afraid for his health? And why stick Curtis Painter into a situation up only 5 stuck deep in his own territory? Why not give Manning one more shot to try and get a two-score lead? The Jets were doing nothing on offense. Forcing Mark Sanchez to have to try and win the game would likely have resulted in him handing the game to you without Curtis Painter having to take off his training wheels. Instead, you make the poor guy the symbol of the most unpopular decision in Indianapolis since Ron Artest went into the crowd. Instead of taking the chance to fire up your team, you let them down. Good luck getting them up for their first playoff game after 2 weeks and one quarter of not bothering to show up for games.
Sunday was also marked by terrible efforts from teams allegedly fighting for playoff berths.
Exhibit A is the Giants no-show at home against already eliminated Carolina to the tune of 41-9. Maybe it's for the best that their tearing Giants Stadium down. In the last 5 seasons, in which the Giants have not finished below .500 and have been to the playoffs 4 times and won a Super Bowl, the Giants have won just 57% of their home games. That's not much of a home field advantage.
On that note, the case for John Fox should come down to one question, are you satisfied going into 2010 with Jake Delhomme as your starter? If his answer isn't an immediate "NO!" fire him.
Baltimore went into Pittsburgh to face a wounded Pittsburgh team, and committed 11 penalties for 113 yards.
Jacksonville forgot to show up for their game in New England, and the gametime temperature was 50 degrees, so you can't use the they were cold excuse.
Oh, and of course, how can I forget the New Orleans Saints, who went up 17-0 on Tampa Bay in the first half AT HOME and lost, 20-17. Really??? What happened to the team that started the season 13-0? Losing to the Cowboys is one thing, but Tampa Bay? This ruined Tampa Bay's season too, as the win makes it that much harder to fire Raheem Morris at the end of the season and go hard after Cowher.
And then finally, on Monday Texas Tech suspended head coach and pirate enthusiast Mike Leach for mistreating a player who had been diagnosed with a concussion. Leach allegedly banished the player to a dark closet for the duration of practice (about 3 hours) more than once. This player also happens to be the son of ESPN football analyst Craig James. There is no good (or mediocre) reason to stick a player in a closet. Mike Leach is crazy, both in a mad scientist way and a you can't have a long conversation with him and follow it way, but there's no way he could think this was a good idea. The only rationale that makes sense is Leach didn't think he was really hurt and he stuck him in a closet to teach him a lesson. In a year where painstaking efforts have been made to educate people about concussions and their severity, this is a crying shame. Kudos to Texas Tech for acting swiftly, though their decision to suspend him before the investigation is completed may have as much to do with Texas Tech's annoyance at Leach's dalliances with other schools last offseason as it does with their opinion of what truly happened. Either way, it's the right move.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
No Offense, FIFA, but You're a Total Joke
Imagine this scenario:
In every season since the NFL went to 6 playoff spots per conference, the playoff spots have been taken by division winners first, and then the remaining slots have been filled with the teams with the top records in each conference, so that each conference starts the playoffs with 6 teams.
Now let's flashback to 2008. The season is over, everyone has played their 16 games. The standings are as you see here. At the end of the season, Roger Goodell meets with a group of senior NFL personnel. They make the following 2 decisions:
1) San Diego does not deserve a playoff spot. They're 8-8, for pete's sake. They were 4-8, they basically had to go to a pre-playoff for the last 4 games, just to squeak in by the skin of their teeth. Meanwhile, you have the Baltimore Ravens, who breezed through the AFC with an 11-5 record, despite starting a rookie quarterback all season long. Plus there are the Colts, they put up 12 wins, and Peyton Manning is a top player. Is that really what we want? To give San Diego a seeded spot and make Baltimore and Indy go on the road?
2) Arizona made the playoffs. After that 49-7 loss at Gilette. The Patriots didn't even make the playoffs! Do we really want to reward these clowns a home game, simply because their division couldn't beat a team of the Octomom and her kids? Look at Atlanta, another rookie quarterback, another 11 win season. We should reward the Falcons with a home game, to give Arizona one just doesn't feel right.
Okay, now that they've decided how they feel the seedings should be, now all that's left is determining how to get the seeds to work out that way. An easy way to punish the teams that struggled to get in is to make the playoff seedings based solely on records and remove division titles from the seeding equation. That would cause the seedings to look like this:
AFC: 1) Titans 2) Steelers 3) Colts 4) Dolphins 5) Ravens 6) Chargers
NFC: 1) Giants 2) Panthers 3) Falcons 4) Vikings 5) Eagles 6) Cardinals
Imagine the uproar when the NFL announced, "These are the seedings, as we changed the seeding criteria from what we used last year to just look at records this year." Chargers and Cardinals fans would be furious. The established guidelines stated that winning the division guaranteed a home playoff game, but the NFL decided they didn't like the results of those criteria, so they changed the criteria after all of the games had been played so they'd know exactly what the outcome of their chosen criteria would be.
It would be like handing over the management of their league to 6 year olds. When a 6 year old plays a game, s/he'll play by the rules as long as s/he keeps winning. Oh come on, I'm not the only one that did this at that age, stop shaking your head. As soon as the tide turns, new rules start popping up. "Oh, you rolled a 12? You have to go back to the start." Or, something like, "I win with an all evens straight." When a 6 year old does this, it's cute (see here. When a bunch of old men do this, is it really cute anymore?
Well, this is exactly what FIFA did, and it's what they do every 4 years. Every 4 years, they rank the World Cup teams 1-32. The host country and the top 7 other countries in the rankings are each placed into a unique group of 4, so there is a real advantage to being seeded. It means you won't have to face a Brazil, or a Spain, or an England before you make the round of 16 at the earliest.
For the 2002 World Cup, the seedings were based on the team's performance in the prior 3 world cups (1990, 1994, 1998), and the FIFA World Rankings of 1999, 2000, and 2001.
For the 2006 World Cup, the seedings were based on the team's performance in the prior 2 world cups (1998, 2002), and the FIFA World Rankings of 2003, 2004, and 2005.
For next year's World Cup, the seedings were based on the October, 2009 FIFA World Rankings. That's it. For reference, if FIFA had used this exact criteria back in 2006, the United States would have been seeded, along with the Czech Republic, and Italy would not have been.
Why was it done this way? Well, no one from FIFA will say it, but it was done to punish France. The only change in seeding between last time's criteria and this set is France loses its seed to the Netherlands. I don't know if it was because the Thierry Henry handball was an embarassment (I highly doubt it), or whether it was because France had to win a playoff against Ireland just to get into the World Cup by the skin of their teeth (I'd put money on this). Had France won their qualifying group instead of needing to go to a playoff, this change would not have been made.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm against the idea of keeping a team that had to win a home-and-home series to qualify because they couldn't do it by winning their qualifying group from a seeded slot in the World Cup. However, I am strongly against running the World Cup like a bunch of 6 year olds. Pick a set of criteria at the beginning of qualification, not at the end. If you feel that a team in France's (or Portugal's) shoes doesn't deserve a seed, fix the criteria for the next World Cup. Don't just go changing it willy nilly so you can get the result that you want.
The unspoken message here (for a US Soccer fan) is don't ever get your hopes up for a World Cup seed. You can do everything right, but if we (FIFA) don't think you deserve a seed, we'll just change the criteria to knock you down and out of the running. Since US Soccer gets no respect on the world stage, barring a 10 year run where the US wins 2 World Cups and is ranked #1 in 98% of the monthly rankings, the US is not getting a seed. And, to be frank, even that may not be enough.
In every season since the NFL went to 6 playoff spots per conference, the playoff spots have been taken by division winners first, and then the remaining slots have been filled with the teams with the top records in each conference, so that each conference starts the playoffs with 6 teams.
Now let's flashback to 2008. The season is over, everyone has played their 16 games. The standings are as you see here. At the end of the season, Roger Goodell meets with a group of senior NFL personnel. They make the following 2 decisions:
1) San Diego does not deserve a playoff spot. They're 8-8, for pete's sake. They were 4-8, they basically had to go to a pre-playoff for the last 4 games, just to squeak in by the skin of their teeth. Meanwhile, you have the Baltimore Ravens, who breezed through the AFC with an 11-5 record, despite starting a rookie quarterback all season long. Plus there are the Colts, they put up 12 wins, and Peyton Manning is a top player. Is that really what we want? To give San Diego a seeded spot and make Baltimore and Indy go on the road?
2) Arizona made the playoffs. After that 49-7 loss at Gilette. The Patriots didn't even make the playoffs! Do we really want to reward these clowns a home game, simply because their division couldn't beat a team of the Octomom and her kids? Look at Atlanta, another rookie quarterback, another 11 win season. We should reward the Falcons with a home game, to give Arizona one just doesn't feel right.
Okay, now that they've decided how they feel the seedings should be, now all that's left is determining how to get the seeds to work out that way. An easy way to punish the teams that struggled to get in is to make the playoff seedings based solely on records and remove division titles from the seeding equation. That would cause the seedings to look like this:
AFC: 1) Titans 2) Steelers 3) Colts 4) Dolphins 5) Ravens 6) Chargers
NFC: 1) Giants 2) Panthers 3) Falcons 4) Vikings 5) Eagles 6) Cardinals
Imagine the uproar when the NFL announced, "These are the seedings, as we changed the seeding criteria from what we used last year to just look at records this year." Chargers and Cardinals fans would be furious. The established guidelines stated that winning the division guaranteed a home playoff game, but the NFL decided they didn't like the results of those criteria, so they changed the criteria after all of the games had been played so they'd know exactly what the outcome of their chosen criteria would be.
It would be like handing over the management of their league to 6 year olds. When a 6 year old plays a game, s/he'll play by the rules as long as s/he keeps winning. Oh come on, I'm not the only one that did this at that age, stop shaking your head. As soon as the tide turns, new rules start popping up. "Oh, you rolled a 12? You have to go back to the start." Or, something like, "I win with an all evens straight." When a 6 year old does this, it's cute (see here. When a bunch of old men do this, is it really cute anymore?
Well, this is exactly what FIFA did, and it's what they do every 4 years. Every 4 years, they rank the World Cup teams 1-32. The host country and the top 7 other countries in the rankings are each placed into a unique group of 4, so there is a real advantage to being seeded. It means you won't have to face a Brazil, or a Spain, or an England before you make the round of 16 at the earliest.
For the 2002 World Cup, the seedings were based on the team's performance in the prior 3 world cups (1990, 1994, 1998), and the FIFA World Rankings of 1999, 2000, and 2001.
For the 2006 World Cup, the seedings were based on the team's performance in the prior 2 world cups (1998, 2002), and the FIFA World Rankings of 2003, 2004, and 2005.
For next year's World Cup, the seedings were based on the October, 2009 FIFA World Rankings. That's it. For reference, if FIFA had used this exact criteria back in 2006, the United States would have been seeded, along with the Czech Republic, and Italy would not have been.
Why was it done this way? Well, no one from FIFA will say it, but it was done to punish France. The only change in seeding between last time's criteria and this set is France loses its seed to the Netherlands. I don't know if it was because the Thierry Henry handball was an embarassment (I highly doubt it), or whether it was because France had to win a playoff against Ireland just to get into the World Cup by the skin of their teeth (I'd put money on this). Had France won their qualifying group instead of needing to go to a playoff, this change would not have been made.
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm against the idea of keeping a team that had to win a home-and-home series to qualify because they couldn't do it by winning their qualifying group from a seeded slot in the World Cup. However, I am strongly against running the World Cup like a bunch of 6 year olds. Pick a set of criteria at the beginning of qualification, not at the end. If you feel that a team in France's (or Portugal's) shoes doesn't deserve a seed, fix the criteria for the next World Cup. Don't just go changing it willy nilly so you can get the result that you want.
The unspoken message here (for a US Soccer fan) is don't ever get your hopes up for a World Cup seed. You can do everything right, but if we (FIFA) don't think you deserve a seed, we'll just change the criteria to knock you down and out of the running. Since US Soccer gets no respect on the world stage, barring a 10 year run where the US wins 2 World Cups and is ranked #1 in 98% of the monthly rankings, the US is not getting a seed. And, to be frank, even that may not be enough.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Hines Ward (and apparently 50% of the Steelers locker room) is a Moron
The Steelers lost a big game last night to the Ravens, thanks in part to the inexperience of their starting quarterback that night, 3rd stringer Dennis Dixon. Before that game, Steelers WR (and amateur neurological expert) Hines Ward addressed the decision to not play starter Ben Roethlisberger on Sunday Night Football:
It's nice to see that the NFL's new emphasis on head injuries went totally over Ward's head.
I've had a concussion, it's not much fun. And mine wasn't that bad of a concussion on the scale. Still, it was a couple of days before I was totally back to normal, and over a couple week before I was running around again. And that was taking a week off, not going through practices and studying lots of videotape each day.
There's a reason you're supposed to be very cautious with head injuries, they can have long lasting effects. Ask Al Toon, who battled vertigo and depression for years after being forced to retire due to concussions. Ask Ted Johnson, who has said he loses periods of time occasionally. Ask Mike Webster, who ended his life homeless and suffering from dementia. And there are many more where they came from. Concussions won't necessarily get better if you take time off in the offseason, each concussion does more damage and leaves you more vulnerable to future concussions. It's kind of like how a sprained ankle leaves you more susceptible to future ankle injuries...only if you needed your ankle to perform basic day-to-day functions like remembering to eat.
And now, you've got Ward questioning Roethlisberger's manhood for not lying to the team doctors and gutting it out. Nevermind that this is the Berger's 4th concussion, or that he's thinking of his future not to try and avoid a hip or knee surgery later in life, but to try and ensure he doesn't become a vegetable at age 45 or 50.
There is a huge difference between gutting through a sprained shoulder (like Matt Stafford did against Cleveland), and trying to push through a concussion (like Hines Ward wants). The shoulder will repair itself and won't interfere with brain operation later in life. The concussion very well might.
Even worse than Ward's comments, is all the talking heads defending his words. Look, I understand the athlete mentality. You're supposed to sacrifice everything for the team. Taking a cortisone shot to mask the pain of a sprained knee or busted shoulder is expected. And I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be. Part of the beauty of sports is becoming a part of something bigger than yourself and giving yourself over to that greater entity. That's all well and good, but head injuries are a different beast. Giving yourself over to the team should not include frying your brain. Walking with a limp or 2 replaced hips at 40 years old is one thing. Regressing to the mental acuity of a 4 year old is entirely different.
The NFL is finally getting this. Coaching staffs are coming around. It's time the players themselves catch up. Expecting a guy to run away from the trainer with a separated shoulder is one thing. Expecting a guy to lie to play through a concussion is idiotic and malicious.
Hines Ward, you are an idiot and an a******. You, and the unnamed 50% you referenced owe the Berger an apology. And Mike Tomlin, you should require this of your moronic wideout.
"This game is almost like a playoff game. It's almost a must-win. I could see some players or teammates questioning, like 'It's just a concussion. I've played with a concussion before,'"
"It's almost like a 50-50 toss-up in the locker room: Should he play? Shouldn't he play? It's really hard to say. I've been out there dinged up; the following week, got right back out there. Ben practiced all week. He split time with Dennis Dixon(notes). And then to find out that he's still having some headaches and not playing and it came down to the doctors didn't feel that they were going to clear him or not – it's hard to say. Unless you're the person [himself]. … I've lied to a couple of doctors saying I'm straight, I feel good when I know that I'm not really straight."
It's nice to see that the NFL's new emphasis on head injuries went totally over Ward's head.
I've had a concussion, it's not much fun. And mine wasn't that bad of a concussion on the scale. Still, it was a couple of days before I was totally back to normal, and over a couple week before I was running around again. And that was taking a week off, not going through practices and studying lots of videotape each day.
There's a reason you're supposed to be very cautious with head injuries, they can have long lasting effects. Ask Al Toon, who battled vertigo and depression for years after being forced to retire due to concussions. Ask Ted Johnson, who has said he loses periods of time occasionally. Ask Mike Webster, who ended his life homeless and suffering from dementia. And there are many more where they came from. Concussions won't necessarily get better if you take time off in the offseason, each concussion does more damage and leaves you more vulnerable to future concussions. It's kind of like how a sprained ankle leaves you more susceptible to future ankle injuries...only if you needed your ankle to perform basic day-to-day functions like remembering to eat.
And now, you've got Ward questioning Roethlisberger's manhood for not lying to the team doctors and gutting it out. Nevermind that this is the Berger's 4th concussion, or that he's thinking of his future not to try and avoid a hip or knee surgery later in life, but to try and ensure he doesn't become a vegetable at age 45 or 50.
There is a huge difference between gutting through a sprained shoulder (like Matt Stafford did against Cleveland), and trying to push through a concussion (like Hines Ward wants). The shoulder will repair itself and won't interfere with brain operation later in life. The concussion very well might.
Even worse than Ward's comments, is all the talking heads defending his words. Look, I understand the athlete mentality. You're supposed to sacrifice everything for the team. Taking a cortisone shot to mask the pain of a sprained knee or busted shoulder is expected. And I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be. Part of the beauty of sports is becoming a part of something bigger than yourself and giving yourself over to that greater entity. That's all well and good, but head injuries are a different beast. Giving yourself over to the team should not include frying your brain. Walking with a limp or 2 replaced hips at 40 years old is one thing. Regressing to the mental acuity of a 4 year old is entirely different.
The NFL is finally getting this. Coaching staffs are coming around. It's time the players themselves catch up. Expecting a guy to run away from the trainer with a separated shoulder is one thing. Expecting a guy to lie to play through a concussion is idiotic and malicious.
Hines Ward, you are an idiot and an a******. You, and the unnamed 50% you referenced owe the Berger an apology. And Mike Tomlin, you should require this of your moronic wideout.
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